City Looking At Converting Calvert, St. Paul Into 2-Way Streets

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Making the most of two of Baltimore’s most heavily traveled streets may mean changes in direction.

Alex DeMetrick reports a couple of major one-way streets might switch over to two-way traffic.

Traffic, like the weather, is one of those things people talk about. But making it change? Baltimore’s thinking about it.

“Were looking at Calvert Street and St. Paul Street, converting that to two-way traffic operations between Fayette and University Parkway. So it’s quite a long stretch,” said Kathy Dominick, Baltimore Department of Transportation.

Which is currently one-way, with traffic on St. Paul coming into the city and Calvert Street carrying traffic out. Some $140,000 has been earmarked to study changing to two-ways in each direction. Among the likely questions?

“If they change the parking on the side of the street, that might change things. It’s hard to say with the way it is right now with parking on both sides of the street,” one driver said.

“I don’t know how they would do it. The streets are pretty tight around here. So that would require perhaps a lot of restructuring,” said Shilpa Srivastava.

But the city is taking more than cars into consideration for the study.

“The residents would like to see slower traffic patterns in their area. So that’s something we’re going to study,” Dominick said.

But some people on foot question just how much calming a change would be.

“I would rather keep this way than going two-ways. I understand they are going fast, but during the busy times they are slow anyway because of the traffic,” said Falgun Patel.

But like that slower traffic, decisions to change won’t be coming any time soon. It’s going to take 15 months to complete a study of changing traffic directions.